


split sticks

by lordbirthdayxv



Series: All Flowers in Time [2]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Character Study, Chronic Pain, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordbirthdayxv/pseuds/lordbirthdayxv
Summary: Kihyun carried scars and had loss frozen inside the leg that had never healed and Changkyun had nothing. Only jewel bright memories of cake on a plate and the sound of gravel crunching beneath wheels.Of grief and coming back together, not whole but also not broken.
Relationships: Im Changkyun | I.M/Yoo Kihyun
Series: All Flowers in Time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968214
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	split sticks

Your hands, he had said once, I want to be your hands. Long and veined and beautiful, skipping like smooth stones on the ocean of my skin.

He watches through the dusty glass of the long window as C digs furiously into the soil. Searching, searching. _Searching for what_? There is mud crusted beneath the half-moons of his fingernails and K wants to ask him those burning questions. 

_Where have you been? What did you bury_?

C looks up and through the glass but sees nothing that can give him pause. Looks right through the wall of flesh and bone that stares from the other side. His beautiful hands like lovely spades bury themselves in the ground again and K wonders how far they can dig. He would like to know. 

C likes to leave a mess around the house. There is mud on the doorstep, on the living room floor, dirty dishes in the kitchen that look forlorn in the early morning gloom. In his mind, he knows he is not alone in the house. There is someone else. Someone who treads cat-like along the corridors. Limps along the walls of the rooms and clings to the old carpets in the dead hours of the night. There is something familiar about it and sometimes C catches a glimpse of deathly pale skin and eyes that shine bright with a sick light. A sickness that follows as the figure marches like lost time in the house. He stops it once when the light of day is breathing its last. He wants to ask it something.

“Aren’t you terrified?”

“Yes.” 

“I made a mess.”

“It’s alright.”

“Will it bring you back?”

It doesn't hear. Breathes its feathery breath upon his cheek and folds itself back into the dusty air. 

K makes the bed and lies on top of the sheets. C comes in and lies on the other side. Here they are, lying side by side, everything and nothing, all at once. Pickled love mixed with lies in the air like water between them. K looks at C and sees the sawdust of years resting on his eyelashes. His fingers move and reach for the hand that is so close and not close enough. Illness spreads its seeds like mushrooms on his tongue as he tries to force words out of his mouth.

“I hear you breathe and it is enough.”

“It isn’t for me.”

Sadness balloons in K’s veins then. Here they are, lying side by side, everything and nothing, all at once. Deathless but dying. 

C’s dreams have always made him draw gasping lungfulls of air. Made his blood howl a name up stairwells in desperate need. But he has forgotten the name like a child forgets his bedtime prayer and now when the dreams come, he has no one to call for. 

He dreams of a blue world with an ocean for a floor and there are cities in the sky that look like the house he lives in. He floats upon the ocean like soft tendrils of mist and someone calls for him in a voice he remembers. _Im Changkyun_ , it says with the sweet cadence of wonderful years spent together, _Im Changkyun? Are you looking for me?_

 _Let me_ , C wants to scream, _let me love you longer let me let me-_

And the voice is high like the sun in a yellow sky and it is never coming down so when C wakes up in a pool of sweat in a perfectly made bed atop sweet-smelling sheets and feels the weight of arms looped around his neck and soft brown hair tickling his cheek, all he can do is close his eyes and fall back asleep. 

K sits with his back against the bedroom door and listens to deep breaths, rising and falling, ringing with the clarity of a million bells in the silent house. His chest aches with a phantom ache and his bad leg throbs in tandem as his body remembers loving someone so deeply that it felt like the weight of the love would crush his ribs and squeeze his heart like a disease. He lifts the hem of his shirt and peeks beneath it, hoping to find a bruise, a sign, but it is just C with his cheeks scarred by the vestiges of youth and his eyes like shiny black cherries. K looks at his fingers dyed purple with C’s blood that he proffers like sacrament and wishes he had more to give in return.

_I have loved you for no reason or rhyme_  
_Cleaning slates as old as time_

From behind the door he hears words moaned like a prayer. Desperate, feverish. _Let me, let me._

When C wakes up that morning, he decides he wants it back. The name he has forgotten. He wants to remember it again, keep it on the tip of his tongue, whisper it to the darkness as fingers lace with his and a mouth breathes staccato breaths against his throat. 

He leaves the bed and finds a clean piece of paper. There is a fine layer of dust upon it. He blows it away and pours his heart in its place. 

_For every breath I take I feel you growing mistier and farther away. There is a lot to be said about who we are but not enough about who we used to be. My eyes can’t see what my hands can’t touch._

_I fancied you’d return the way you said,_

_But I grow old and I forget your name._

_I’m inclined to believe I made you up inside my head after all_

_-C_

When K finds the letter it is coated in dust outside his bedroom door. There are minutes to dawn and he is apprehensive of leaving the house. Now that his ears are used to deafening silences and careful footsteps, the din of people shakes him to his core.

He sees the letter and his heart beats like it has forgotten how to, this way and that it clatters inside his chest and flutters against his ribs. There is an urgency in his hands now and they move of their own accord. He writes words that had stayed suspended like sand in his veins. Is it enough? He does not know. But that is not important. 

_I am trying to keep my feet on the ground but they leap and glide and there is little I can do. There are iron boats of guilt on the soles of my feet and I wish there was a way to you through space and time, a path I can walk barefoot and come to you._

_I would like to think I am tangible enough in your memory. I would like to be tangible so you can hold me._

_-K_

In the early hours of morning, C is aware that the voices he hears have trickled out of his dreams into the waking world. Bright, tinkling laughter like summer breeze passing through glass chimes. 

_What do you want for breakfast, baby?_

_Cake!_

Laughter. _Well alright then. Cake for breakfast it is._

C pushes his face deeper into the pillows and moans in the ever-present pain that ebbs and tides in his veins. There is a ruffle of papery feathers and when he looks to the door there is a letter on the floor.

He wonders how it managed to collect dust in the seconds it took him to scramble frantically out of bed. But it’s alright. He needs to tell it to his nameless housemate. 

_I am hearing laughter from the years I shelved cleanly away and I wish you could hear it too. I wish you were still tethered to my world so you could share my pain. A part of me wants you to hurt as I hurt and another wants to love you like I used to. Who are you, stranger mine? All I remember are faint outlines of your eyes and the curve of your spine._

_Did I ever touch you? My hands are old and my ears ring with a child’s laughter. Tell me you hear it too._

_-C_

K remembers. How could he forget? His ears shut out all sound except for the dull ringing of high-pitched laughter that he has not heard in years. _I hear it too. How I could not hear it when it rushes like a bloodflood in our home_. Sounds of horns loud at the back of his head and a small voice. _Daddy can we stop for milkshakes_?

“Mr. Yoo are you okay?”

Her name is Ophelia and she has lovely brown eyes that take up entirely too much space on her face. There are twenty young pairs of eyes on him and he feels misery strike its whip along his bones and choke him in it’s vice grip. 

“Yes honey. I was just thinking.”

“I finished, Mr. Yoo.”

He looks behind him. They are doing Silverstein. A hand is raised.

“Mr. Yoo, why did Abigail die?”

The room feels entirely too small. Not enough air to breath. 

“Did she really die because of a pony?” Hannah’s eyes are already filling with tears.

“Can you die if you don’t get a pony?” “I don’t have a pony Mr. Yoo will I die now?” “But I don’t want to die, my Mommy will be sad.”

There are three little girls crying in front of him and one little boy whimpering, asking for his mother. K wants to breathe but there is no air and his hands are crumpling the letter from his ghost and all he wants is to gulp in air into his shriveled lungs. 

When he opens his eyes he is in the infirmary and his leg is hurting as if to spite him. He grits his teeth and swallows it up. He needs the reminder. 

“Ki,” Minhyuk’s voice is soft. Careful. K hates it. Hates being treated like a time bomb. 

“Are the kids okay?”

“We sent them home.”

Silence. 

“Do you think-” Hesitation. K turns his face to the window. There is a leaf stuck in the windowpane. K thinks it is his ghost, come to see him break down. At his weakest and worst.

“Do you think you should take a break?”

Silence. Another voice.

“Stop giving him a choice. I’ve had enough.”

K tightens his jaw and stares back at the leaf. _Look what they’re doing to me. This is all I have and they want to take it away._

“Kihyun.” There is no hesitation in Hyungwon’s voice. “Go home. You’re taking a forced leave of absence. One week.”

“Who decided that?”

“I did. Because I make decisions around here.” Then, softer. “Go home to him. Talk to him. He needs you, Kihyun and you need him too. It’s just as hard for him. Somin-”

Alarm bells. Loud, loud, loud, tearing his eardrums apart. He is screaming for Hyungwon to shut up and then he’s in a car. Driven along a familiar road to an unfamiliar house where his ghost awaits. 

“Minhyuk?”

“Yes, Ki?”

“Why did Abigail die?”

Silence. The sound of windshield wipers slipping across streaming glass.

“Did she die because they didn’t buy her a pony?”

“Kihyun-”

“Or because they didn’t stop for milkshakes on the way to school?”

“That has nothing to do with-”

“ _All because of a pony that her parents wouldn’t buy-_ ”

“That’s not why she died.” Sharp inhale. Right turn. The ting-a-ling of the indicator. “It was nobody’s fault.”

Silence. They are pulling up in front of the house. K can see his car that sits like an old relic on the porch, the rain washing off the dust gathered upon it as it falls mercilessly in sheets.

“ _And her heart was broken and she did die._ ” He looks at Minhyuk. “She did die.”

Minhyuk is warm when he is pulled against him. K suddenly feels tired beyond belief.

“Who do I blame, Minhyuk? Who do I blame because she did die.”

C hears the sound of the front door opening and hides behind the bathroom door. K is early. Too early. Worry beats its hummingbird wings inside his chest as he hears Minhyuk’s voice. The phone in his pocket is buzzing and he fears for the worst.

_Panic attack. One week of forced leave. Call me or Wonnie if you guys need anything._

Holed up in the hallway bathroom, C hears the muted sounds of weeping and feels his heart give out. Countless days of wordless pain. Of living on an island suspended against a pink and yellow sky, the two of them wandering specter-like, navigating thick abstractions and hiding behind words that are not theirs. In rooms where voices flowed like diaphanous silk and crashed like waves against rocks now lies silence with its thick web of grey uncertainty, growing thicker with each week that feels like a year. C has long stopped measuring time in ordinary ways because it stretches and shrinks at will. Changes shape when the two ghosts in this house begin to materialize in its hallways. Even now, when it feel like centuries of pain have passed, his phone disagrees and tells him it has been a mere ten minutes.

When the sheet of paper slides quietly beneath the bathroom door, C reaches for it like a lifeline. The words are smeared with tears and he can feel pain radiating in waves from them.

_Of course I hear it. Nothing in this house echoes like your sleeping breath and the ghostly laughter of our past. I want to write it down but words evade me like squirrels in the underbrush and I find myself talking in euphemisms for things that used to be easy to talk about when they hadn’t happened to us._

_A man takes his sadness and throws it away._

_I had to do the same. Help me find the words I packed in books and put away like my sadness in a glass box._

_-K_

He had never been good at saying exactly what he meant so when the time came to write his vows, K had taken refuge behind people who could. Sitting in the town library, he had pulled a familiar volume from the shelf and opened it beneath the warm amber light of the desk lamp. He couldn’t think of what he wanted to say to C. He had already said everything there had to be said. He dwelt in silences and the spaces between words, where things are unsaid but still understood. As he ran his finger along words he loved on a yellowed page, he pictured C’s smile, his delicate fingers and the slope of his waist and found the right words. 

_I'll love you till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry_ and C had beamed at him with glittering tears hanging from the eaves of his eyelashes, _And the seven stars go squawking, like geese about the sky._

_The years shall run like rabbits_

_for in my arms I hold_

_The Flower of the Ages_

_And the first love of the world_

Celebration followed and wine flowed like rain from bottles. And now, as he sits in the dim silence of the living room, he laughs at who he was back then, 23 and so young and so, _so_ blind. So blind because he had taken what he had wanted and ignored the rest. He wonders idly if that was a sign. May as well have been one.

“O let not Time deceive you

You cannot conquer time.”

There is a voice that speaks in a ragged whisper behind him then. “Time watches from the shadow and coughs when you would kiss.”

K stares resolutely into the fireplace. Hears the voice growing fainter as it disappears back down the hallway, leaving whispers in its wake.

“The glacier knocks in the cupboard

The desert sighs in the bed

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.”

It takes him a long time to look to his side and see the sheet of paper, folded neatly on the sofa beside him. 

_Come._

C lies on his bed and strains his ears for the uneven footfalls of the ghost. He has faith that he will come. He will come because C has asked. Crossed the bridge neither of them had dared cross before and he knows that it means something. It is important.

He hears sounds as soft as bruised peaches hitting a carpeted floor and a thud against the door. He swallows his disappointment and sits against his side of the threshold. For long moments, there is silence. Then.

“How are you?”

“The same.”

“You wanted me to come.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

A beat. 

“I don’t know.”

C squeezes his eyes shut and wonders if there is a way to reach the ghost without touching him. There doesn’t seem to be. 

“Sing for me.”

C breathes in sharply. Blinks. “What do you want to hear?”

“Our song.”

C laughs quietly. Tries to remember the words he had written one drunken evening when K had looked beautiful in a blood-red sweater and it had brought out a savage kind of possessiveness within him. _Mine_ , he had whispered as he kissed a ruby-red mouth. Yours, K had assured him. Foolish, youthful promises. 

He sings of stories stored in each limb, of whispered confessions of love in ears glowing red with warmth. Of love that blooms and pools between shining eyes, dreaming of universes of could- and would-be. Of growing old, very old, bones of ash, but of love that glows like hot coal. Foundations laid with love.

Silence. He hears K breathing slowly.

“There used to be more.”

C cannot help the bitter laughter that bubbles in his throat like lava.

“I know.”

“Did you-”

“I didn’t forget.”

Silence once more. Longer.

“You’re being cruel.”

C pushes off of the ground. Feels resentment simmer underneath his skin.

“I know what that feels like.”

He hears soft footsteps limping away from the door and the silence that comes after is total and absolute. There are no more letters after that. 

K waits for C to leave the house before he steps out of his room, steps small and hesitant. Mapping the house he used to know so well. He doesn’t doubt the house. It has been built on foundations as solid as molten love woven with fidelity. There is history in its walls and whispered confessions in its corridors. It had been a bit out of the way, an old Victorian that had been cheap enough to make an immediate deposit. _Forever house_ , C had said, his cheeks ablaze in the winter afternoon as he looked up at the windows on the top floor and K had smiled and taken his hand in his. 

Forever house. His and C’s and-

He sits down at the kitchen table and holds his phone between his palms. Re-orders time and re-directs its flow. Counts backwards to the day that they built a glass wall between them and began to look at one another like one stares at a specter in a corner of the room at night, with startled eyes that look away and pretend they saw nothing. Counts four hundred and seventy five days. 

Too long. A string stretched almost to breaking point. And K doesn’t want it to break. 

He picks up his phone and makes the call. It is three rings before she answers. 

“Kihyun.” Careful. Measured. K draws a shaky breath, his hand wandering to the leg that has begun to hurt with glaring intensity.

“Seola.”

A long pause before she speaks and her voice sounds watery and uncertain.

“Took you long enough, asshole.”

And K feels a dam break within him with the intensity of a deluge. The tears come, ugly and wet and he has so many things to say but none of them can mean what he wants them to mean and he curses himself for his impotence. On the other end, Seola cries too and it sounds like she has held it in as long as he has because there is relief beneath her sobs, gratefulness vibrating like a core alongside the agony. 

“I’m so sorry.” Apologies. He can do that. It’s the least he can do. The least he can say to the woman who lost just as much as he and C did. And it was his fault.

“S- stop,” she sniffles and cries some more. “Stop saying- stop saying sorry. Has n-nobody told you- told you that it wasn’t-,” deep inhales, too fast. “it wasn’t- _it wasn’t_ -”

“It was. You don’t underst- un- understand.” He sounds like a petulant child to himself. Hiccupping his way through a confession that warrants punishment. He wants to be punished. Wants someone to tell him he had been a bad father. Because that's what he was. A bad father who didn’t stop for milkshakes because traffic was bad and they were already late for school. A bad father who ran a red light. Crushed door and a crushed daughter. There had been nothing left to say goodbye to.

“I know more than anyone,” she is still crying, forcing her voice to be steady, “more than- than anyone what it f-felt like. Jesus Christ I gave birth to her, Kihyun, how could I _not_ know how it feels-” 

He sobs louder, mindless apologies at the very tip of his tongue but she beats him to it.

“You loved her so much, Kihyun. You loved her _so much_. You and Changkyun gave her everything I never could.” She pauses, sniffles and continues. “She was so happy with you. And I’m so happy that she got to live her life that way-”

Her voice cracks and she moans as if in physical pain. K wishes he could go to her, comfort her. But there are thousands of miles and hundreds of emotional walls between them.

“I forgive you,” she whispers at last and K marvels at how those words set him free. He screams in the house that used to be a home and feels it echo his screams, feels it share his pain. He sobs long after she has hung up. 

Entering quietly late at night, C feels something within the house has shifted in his absence. A brick in the walls. A chair in the living room. Maybe the sheets on his bed. He walks as if asleeep, shadow-like in the silent house. Walks to the room a few doors down from his and it feels like he is entering alien territory. The walls are strangers here and the corners look unfamiliar. But it feels right. In hundreds of days of running blind circles around the house, he finally feels like he is headed in the right direction. 

The door creaks open and the room beyond is bathed in a warm golden light that washes over the figure on the bed and renders his transience into substance and C wants to run forward and run his fingers over the solid comfort of skin that he used to know, wants to ask its name just so he can call it once more. 

“Are you here?” Cautious, afraid.

“Come here, Changkyun.”

Misery releases its chokehold around his throat and the first breath is nothing short of a shock. His knees hit the floor and pieces of him scattered in the air float at lightning speed from all over the house, attracted to him like magnets, and he suddenly feels _whole_ again. Feels himself become a name from a mere letter signed at the bottom of a dusty page. 

“ _Kihyun_ ,” he breathes, sobs, “ _Where have you been_?”

And Kihyun is there, flesh and bone and material, leaning beside him and crying painfully hard. Changkyun throws his arms around his neck and breathes his scent. Runs his hands feverishly all over his body. Kihyun is here, with his lovely voice and warm skin and arms that circle protectively around Changkyun’s body as he holds him close. Crooning a sweet song in his ear and calling his name _Changkyun, Changkyun, Changkyun, baby I’m so sorry, I’m so terribly sorry-_

“You were gone.” Changkyun suddenly feels anger creep over his spine. Grabs Kihyun by the front of his shirt and shakes him hard. “You left me alone, all alone. How _could_ you? How could you leave me behind when you promised, you _promised_ -

Kihyun’s hands wrap around his wrists and he speaks, low and repentant. “I needed time, baby. I had to- I needed to do this alone-”

“No you _didn’t_.” Changkyun snarls. Shoves him back over the floor and gets on top. Winds his hands in his shirt once again and screams his frustration into his stunned face. “We were supposed to do it _together_. It was- it is- _my_ pain too. If you’d stopped being a martyr and just _shared_ \- I just wanted you to be here, Kihyun. She was my-” his voice is croaking, broken and strained. “goddammit, she was my daughter too and we were _both_ supposed to take care of her and if it was your fault then it was mine too because I was supposed to look after her just as much as you were!”

He breathes, feeling his throat close up and tears stream down his face. Lets go of Kihyun’s shirt and gets off him. Wraps his arms around himself and weeps. 

“If it was your fault then it was mine too.” And he says it over and over until Kihyun crawls over to him. Puts Changkyun’s head in his lap and lets him cry. 

And so Changkyun cries. Cries until he falls asleep and when he wakes up, he is in a bed that smells like Kihyun and Kihyun is beside him, wrapped in his arms and breathing a calming rhythm against his neck. Changkyun hears the house hold its breath in the pale light of the rising dawn and tightens his arms around Kihyun. Kisses his temple, his hair, his forehead. Over and over. Presses kisses into his cheeks and neck and doesn’t stop even as he stirs and makes little sounds of wakefulness in Changkyun’s arms. 

“Hey.” A kiss on his cheek. Another on the forehead.

“Hey yourself. Are you trying to eat me?”

Changkyun giggles and kisses both his cheeks. He can’t bring himself to stop. Fears that if he stopped, Kihyun would disappear with the waning light of the moon. 

“I missed you, hamster.”

A smile. Warm and pretty. 

“I missed you too, sweetheart.”

Kihyun pulls him close and kisses him for the first time in four hundred and seventy six days and Changkyun almost cries. Pushes Kihyun into the mattress and kisses him back. Cups his face and licks into his mouth and Kihyun sighs. Runs his hands up Changkyun’s sides and digs his fingers into his waist. _Mine_ , he whispers and Changkyun pours all his want and love and madness into _yours_. They kiss until Changkyun can’t feel his mouth and Kihyun’s kisses are languid brushes of his lips against his. 

They wander into the kitchen for the first time in months, Changkyun holding onto Kihyun’s hand as he hobbles along. He sits at the kitchen island and watches Kihyun frown at the dust coating every surface. Hunting through the cabinets yields nothing except a stale package of cookies and they sit on the rug in front of the fireplace to eat it together. Changkyun looks at Kihyun in the early morning light and realizes he hasn’t looked at him properly in what feels like eternity. He looks so thin, his wrists unhealthily delicate, his jaw almost sharpened to a point at his chin. Changkyun has spent his days outside, eating at cafés and sometimes with friends. He wonders if Kihyun even ate at all. 

“I talked to Seola.”

Changkyun starts violently from his reverie. 

“You… did?”

Kihyun nods. Chews silently for a minute. Looks up at Changkyun. “She said she- she forgives me.”

His breath hitches and Changkyun reaches forward to take his hands in his. 

“Of course she does.”

Kihyun looks at him, eyes wide. Searching. “Do you?”

Changkyun hugs him. Holds his angular body like fine china. Both know that needs no answer. 

Kihyun makes coffee that they thankfully still have as Changkyun debates if it is a good idea to walk him through the memories. They had never really grieved at all. It was as if he had been left locked out of a room while Kihyun gathered all their pain and disappeared behind the closed doors. He carried his scars and had loss permanently frozen inside the leg that had never healed and Changkyun had nothing. Only jewel bright memories of cake on a plate and the sound of gravel crunching beneath wheels. He remembered losing not one, but two people that day, his loss immaterial as Kihyun’s progressively unreachable body, his pain effervescent in the air. 

So he gets up and retrieves the thick, wire-bound album from beneath his mattress where he had hidden it like he had stolen it. In a sense he had. For all Kihyun knew, it was packed along with the rest of her things in neatly labelled boxes in the attic. He takes the album to the living room where Kihyun sits with two mugs of coffee. His smile freezes when his eyes land on the book.

“That’s-”

“Yes.”

“Why do you-”

Changkyun smiles sadly. “Because I miss her, Ki.”

Kihyun’s lip quivers as he lowers his eyes and cradles his mug between his palms. Changkyun moves closer. Sits next to him and puts an arm around his shoulder.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he whispers tenderly against his temple. Kihyun buries his face in the crook of his neck and shakes his head.

“I want to see her.”

So Changkyun opens the album and looks at her. At both of them from seasons ago. In the hospital with Seola at their first scan. In a café when Kihyun had insisted that he somehow also had pregnancy cravings because _she’s part of me, you guys I can sense what she needs and she needs cake_. Seola looking radiant with her ever-growing bump that Changkyun had leaned his cheek against and listened to the whump of a kick and had startled himself. Minhyuk looking critically at a display of baby bottles as Kihyun stood beside him, mildly amused. Minhyuk and Hyungwon both beside Kihyun and Seola as he held her hand minutes before she was supposed to be wheeled in. And finally, a small, very small baby in Seola’s arms and a sobbing Kihyun leaning against Changkyun’s shoulder. 

_Somin_. Changkyun had said suddenly and Seola had beamed. 

Somin who did indeed love cake. Who somehow managed to simultaneously look like and also better than all three of her parents. Kihyun laughs beside him when his eyes land on a one-year old little girl in a princess dress, cheek squished against Kihyun’s on her first birthday. Two years old and staring at a rubber chew toy with a mixture of apprehension and confusion. Here she is three and a half, a laughing Changkyun holding her in his arms on the living room sofa. Dozens and dozens of photos from her first day at kindergarten. Even more on all of her birthdays. Kihyun and Changkyun and occasionally Seola, who had soon moved away but came for all the little celebrations. 

“We look so happy here,” Kihyun murmurs, a finger trailing delicately over Somin’s little face. Changkyun had gotten a new editorial job and they had celebrated over burgers and milkshakes with Hyungwon and Minhyuk. Somin had been five, with cheeks like hamster pouches and a mouth that ran like a motorboat. She asked so many questions and Kihyun, the stay-at-home dad that he had been, delightfully answered all of them. _She’s so smart_ , he would tell Seola over the phone, _you should hear her, she already knows her Silverstein and her Dahl and honestly? Why wouldn’t she, she’s got my brains._

“She was difficult not to be happy around,” Changkyun tightens his arm around Kihyun and wipes his eyes on the back of his hand. Kihyun sniffles and looks up at him. 

“There was so much traffic,” his voice is small. Changkyun buries his nose in his hair and inhales his scent. Here they are, here it is. “It was parent-teacher day. I was _so_ mad at the stupid signal I didn’t even care anymore. And she saw it, you know?” he sniffles and cries a little and Changkyun lets him catch his breath. Holds him close. “She saw I was angry and she wanted to help in the only way she knew how.”

Changkyun smiles, soft and sad. “Milkshakes?”

Kihyun laughs through his tears. “Fucking milkshakes.” He sobs a little and wraps both arms around Changkyun’s waist. “And I just snapped at her. Told her we were late. Told her she had had cake for breakfast and it was too much sugar and didn’t even realize she wanted them for me. And I never got to say another word because she was- she was-”

He breaks off into sobs that wrack his whole frame like a window in a storm and Changkyun holds him close and lets him ride it out. They had needed this, the both of them. When Kihyun had become nonverbal and bed-bound for six months afterwards. When Changkyun had begun working from home to take care of him. Pawing insistently at invisible walls that Kihyun had suddenly erected between them, refusing to share, refusing to give Changkyun his half to grieve. All that had been left of their home was a leg with a metal rod in it. That ached with never-ending pain and remained in stasis as time began to malfunction and eventually slumber heavily in the house that was no longer a home. A painful souvenir from a day both of them wanted to forget that now throbbed horribly between them. 

Changkyun carries Kihyun to bed and lays him down as he continues to cry. Gives him pain medication and sits by him as he writhes in agony, begging Changkyun to make it stop. Later, when he falls into troubled sleep, Changkyun curls up beside him and strokes his hair and kisses his face. And this isn’t ideal but it is what they have. Salvaging the remains of their broken relationship should take longer and it will. There is a child-shaped hole between them that will never be filled and Changkyun doesn’t expect it to either. Pain and loss run deep in the crevices between them but now, with Kihyun in his arms and the flow of time marching inexorably forward, he knows they must flow with it until they cannot anymore.

_It was late, late in the evening  
The lovers, they were gone  
The clocks had ceased their chiming  
And the deep river ran on._

**Author's Note:**

> the poem is "as i walked out one evening" by w. h. auden
> 
> [stesichoros's difference](https://twitter.com/ajghar1)


End file.
